Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for mature content.
last night on social media you told me to
"kill yourself"
so i took your advice.
took the pills from the counter
and the gun from the drawer
laid down in the hot hot bathtub
and sang my last lullaby.
how do you feel
having the image ingrained of my mother's face
finding me lying there
in the red red water
in your brain?
how do you feel
remembering my father's face
on the television
howling as i was taken away?
how do you feel
remembering my best friend's speech
unwavering even as the tears pooled in her eyes
standing in front of my grave
at my funeral?
how do you feel
with the policeman knocking at your door
knowing what you did
asking you to come down to the station?
how do you feel
knowing that my existence
with its end
brought yours as well?
i wrote this so the world will know
who was the end of me.
"I truly hope you choose to end your life one day. I want you to look down the barrel of a gun and realize your existence was for nothing, and wipe it from the face of the earth with one pull. People will struggle to come up with anything good to say at your funeral, you'll be burned/buried, and forgotten in a day."
[This is actual anon hate I received on my tumblr sideblog. From who, I don't know. I'm not actually planning on suicide, this is just something I thought of in response to it. All capitalization errors are intentional.]
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125,029 Literary Works • 672,786 Reviews
Woah. First of all, how could anyone say something like that?! Secondly, I loved this poem. You showed how even though we can't see the person tormenting us, it still makes a huge impact on us. Your poem had great imagery and it flowed nicely. You had a consistent meter, too. I liked you repetition of the phrase, "how do you feel" because it turned the piece back onto the bully, instead of focusing on only the victim as we often read.
The only part that I thought didn't flow as well or didn't look the way it was supposed to was,
"having the image ingrained of my mother's face
finding me lying there
in the red red water
in your brain?"
I know here that you were trying to say that " my mother's face finding me lying there in the red red water" was the image in the bully's brain. But the last two lines made it seem like there was "red red water in your brain." As in, blood in the bully's brain. Of course I could tell what you were trying to say, but I had to read it a couple times which disrupted the flow of the poem a bit. Sorry if that was confusing but I couldn't think of a good way to say it. Ignore that bit if it didn't make any sense to you.
One last thing. Formatting the poem on this site is tricky. If you hold down SHIFT + ENTER when starting a new line in a poem, it single-spaces it, instead of double-spacing as it does if you only press ENTER. If you want to start a new stanza, don't hold SHIFT and only press ENTER. This will double-space that line so that you have a seperation between your stanzas. (I know your poem only had 1 stanza, but in case you need to know in the future)
I hope that helps. I really liked this poem; it brought the horrors of cyberbullying to an easily relatable format with vivid imagery. Great job! *likes poem*
Note: I just read through the other reviews before posting this one and I saw that @JohannaPomeray already made a review about the few confusing lines I pointed out. Sorry for the repetition!
Wow, screw him/her. This is cyber-bullying. You know, this truly reminds me of the death of Megan Meier. It's heartbreaking to see what the internet could do to people and their lives.
That was amazing, and I am sorry to you that you got that from someone...
Oh. My. God. So pretty <3
I'm a sucker for poems that grab my heart, and this one grabbed on tight and didn't let go. Seriously, it was beautiful, and done in a very nice and simplistic style that made your point and theme clear as day.
I'm sorry to ruin my fawning adoration with a rather weird question, but how does the speaker die? You mention both pills and a gun, but later you say she died peacefully in a bathtub, which made me think overdose. But then you say the water in the bathtub was red, and now I'm thinking slit wrists. This is a weird question, I'm sorry.
And the hate you got? That person has no idea what it's like to be you. Neither do I, for that matter, but when people hate on you, just remember how much more wonderful and creative you are then them.
Harsh review ahead. Don't read if not inclined.
I'm sorry, but this is such pathetic ego-wank, you know? It screams "there, you won! are you happy now, hmph?!" with the same kind of loudness that a comment about killing yourself does. I am upset, because this is not the way anyone should deal with anonymous negativity. At the end of the day, it's the commenter who's being focussed on. It's the commenter's fault, the commenter should be torn apart by guilt, the commenter should go to jail, and so forth. Isn't that just redirecting the problem, rather than solving it? Wouldn't a healthier reaction be "screw you", or "I won't kill myself because I'm a good person and I know that, and this jerk is all the worse off for having this kind of poison burn his mind"?
Spoiler
Why does it feel like the only purpose of this piece is to gather sympathy? I think it's because I feel its grubby hands reaching for mine, and I'm unwilling to part with it so easily. Especially when the piece doesn't even try to be good for me, to be pleasurable reading. I mean, I'm no saint. I've been wronged before and wrote out my demons as literary works, of course, but at least I tried to dress it up as if it wasn't concerning me specifically. All this work wants is my sympathy, giving me nothing in return. As such, I have nothing good to say about this piece. It's neither a healthy way to deal with life's random evil, nor is it an admirable piece of art. It's wallowing in its own pity, and I've really no patience for pieces like that.
Yours,
cC
I don't know what the hell you just read, but it sure wasn't this poem. This is not a poem that seems to grab sympathy, it's the thoughts of someone who is bullied enough to be suicidal. I don't see why every damn time someone expresses any suicidal feeling in a public way it automatically makes them an attention wh*re. I would say more but the bell for my class is about to ring.
This is ridiculous, you are ridiculous, and you totally missed the message of this piece.
I agree with Eli
Woah. @carbonCore, that wasn't cool. @kingofeli didn't write this piece so that you would give Eli sympathy. He wrote it for himself to get his feelings out and to show readers that cyberbullying isn't something to joke about. It damages the victim so much. If you didn't like what you read, at least offer some CONSTRUCTIVE criticism instead of just tearing Eli down.
Thank you fox, you're very kind.
This... This is so perfect. I'm literally about to cry.
Amazing <3
Thank you so much!
I'll leave this a comment since I can't actually review the technical side of the poem, but I will say that I liked it very much.
I know many people nowadays become victims of other people's ignorance and lack of link between tongue (fingers) and the brain. They don't think, and don't consider the possibility of the person on the other side having real problems, dealing with their own bad things that life threw on their plate, even struggling with depression and/or other serious conditions which people tend to shrug off as meaningless phases.
It was very nice, and very refreshing, to see this kind of take on the matter; this poem is something that should pop out to every person out there who thinks it's a good idea to tell a stranger to kill themselves for the kicks of saying it.
As for the anon who actually told you that, you've already given them more thoughts than they deserve (though it turned into an interesting poem, so I totally salute it), and I can only hope they somehow, somewhere run into this poem and realise how much harm they've potentially been doing.
Keep writing, and keep not planning on anything that would stop you from it c:
Thank you so much for the review! I used to be extremely suicidal, I still am sometimes, but it's much better now than how it was.
Ohmygoodness this is a whirlwind tied to a stone. Ah that is some deep, dark content. First off I would like to apologize for whatever deranged and deprived facet of the human race felt it necessary to send you such an awful awful message. I truly hope that, after using it as fodder for this dynamic piece, you chucked all care for this person or their opinion out the window and gave it nary another though. You are Fantastic.
) but there is something off there. I think it's the relative specificity of that statement in comparison to the rest of the poem. You could just say 'last night', and then we as readers could decide how it was communicated. Maybe leaving the quote at the end would help, and also maybe the exact time it was sent, down below it, which would cause the reader to think twice about it. Then, the bathtub scene. 'the hot hot bathtub' is a little weird for me, just because it implies that the tub is hot, but not the water, if there is any. I really like the way that sounds, but you could just say bath and it would make a little more sense to me. Sang my last lullaby is beautiful. The scene where you are asking about the image imprinted in their brain is a little convoluted too. 'how do you feel/having the image engraved..../finding me in the red red water/ in your brain...' it makes it seem like you and the water are actually in his brain. It's just a little confusing but could be easily cleaned up. All in all, this is a fantastic piece. You have represented release and scorn and sorrow and spite and it's just fantastic. The manic pace of mind, the quiet determination, it's all there. You have a lovely economy of language, and I think you could refine it and manipulate it to great lengths. Thank you for sharing!
Anyway, to business! As I said, dynamic. The non-capitalization was a very good choice, as it makes the reader look closer and gives us nothing to grab onto visually, so the feeling of being slightly lost is communicated very well. Also, not capitalizing 'I' is a big statement about the self-conscious mind, and that resonates really well through the poem. You have a fantastic impulse for scene, and stringing scene together seems easy for you. ( have you ever thought about songwriting? I would love to see it if you ever try. ) My main critique would be to work on clarity, and maybe brevity as well. I know this is a piece that is very tumultuous, but you could also use very sparse language to communicate that. The first line, 'last night on social media' . I dunno, but something about that seems off. Im not sure how to say that in a way that seems less off, ( last night on Tumblr wouldn't work
Thank you very much! I'll be sure to keep all of that in mind when I'm looking at this again.
Hello,
This is my first review and I'm so excited. I clearly see the message here, and I think its pretty sad (in a good way). I kind of like the none capitalization style. It seems to be some kind of new trend out there which is popular in poetry. Cyber bullying is truly a terrible thing. I'm thankful that you're okay and not planning on ending your life cause you won't be able to write any more. Just a reminder, don't let the negative things others say about you get to you and prevent you from becoming the person you're destined to be. I strongly dislike haters. Anyway nice job and happy writing.